Is Instagram Giving Taylor Swift Special Access? We Asked Them

You may have heard a rumor that Taylor Swift, amid the drama with the Kardashian West family, has been granted access by Instagram to mass-delete comments from trolls.

What drama, you ask? Well, if you've been living in a sealed clam shell for the past six months, here's what happened. Swift denounced the Kanye West song, "Famous," in which he called her a "bitch," but he claims that he asked her permission first. Swift denied she ever knew about being called a bitch. Kim Kardashian leaked the phonecall where he ran the lyrics by her (leaving out the "bitch" line). And now everyone's mad at each other, and Swift's getting a lot of mean Instagram comments.

We asked Instagram what the deal was with this new troll-deleting tool, and they said that they're trying to find new ways to keep people safe from bullying on their social media platform.

“We’re always looking for ways to help people have a positive experience with comments on Instagram. We're currently focused on providing tools to
improve accounts with the most high-volume comment threads, and we will use our
learnings to continue to improve the comments experience on Instagram.”

Instagram didn't quite confirm which accounts have the new tool, which they are testing with a select few who have high-volume comments, so it's very possible that Swift may have access. They also pointed out that Facebook has given their users the ability to moderate like this, so why not try it for themselves? In the end, they hope to open the tool up to everyone.

This whole conversation is extremely timely, as Twitter struggles to protect its users from bullies. Last week, Leslie Jones sparked a conversation after she called out racists using hate speech against her on her Twitter account. She also urged the platform to do something about it. Jones worked with Twitter to slowly delete the hateful accounts, but there is so much more to be done, she said during an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers.

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